Dammit Tom, you've got to stop clouding speculation with facts!

On 9/1/2020 6:30 PM, 2G wrote:
On Tuesday, September 1, 2020 at 10:22:05 AM UTC-7, Ramy wrote:
Tom you realize you don’t know what you talking about? Paragliders fly much faster and farther than you think. In fact some of these guys often fly 300-500km in paragliders.
Also the safety record of “these idiots” as you call them is in fact better than gliders. There are many more paraglider pilots and paraglider flights than sailplanes, with lower fatality rate. Sure they get injured much more often, but most of their accidents are survivable. We lost more glider pilots in Nevada than paraglider pilots. They certainly carry a lot of water with them, and can easily land on any dirt road and walk. And since many of them are younger and in better shape than many of us, they can walk out 20+ miles to the nearest road. They fly with 2M ham radios which reaches far more than “few miles” I believe further than our hand held radios, and can also use ham relays and other technologies. And most of them fly with trackers.
Perhaps non soaring pilots can make judgments on anyone who chose to fly light aircrafts without engines in the middle of nowhere, but not us.

Ramy
The authorities put in over 4,000 hours of time looking for this guy w/o success. That's TWO MAN YEARS (https://www.usnews.com/news/best-sta...nd-paraglider). There were cu-nims in the area the day he flew, unsuitable conditions for paragliders in my opinion. This is from Wikipedia (not me):
Due to the paramotor's [same aerodynamics as a paraglider] slow forward speed and nature of a soft wing, it is not safe in high winds, turbulence, or intense thermal activity.
And:
Over the years 1994−2010, an average of seven in every 10,000 active paraglider pilots have been fatally injured

The range of the radios was estimated by his friend who flew with him that day. Ham radios are not aviation radios, so you can't communicate with other aircraft, particularly on 121.5. As you well know, 20 miles in that country can just make you that much more lost - and that's assuming they land w/o injury. I don't know how much water he was carrying, but it certainly wasn't enough for a full day (1 gallon). The guy covered about 54 miles in 3 hours, or averaged about 18 mph.

This is Oroc/Johnston's own account of looking for another missing paraglider pilot (who did survive):
https://xcmag.com/news/the-last-flig...kiwi-johnston/
So, he knew exactly how hard it is to find these guys. And his buddies waited a FULL DAY to report them missing, and, then, ONLY at the urging of an Ely glider pilot - not that it made much difference in the end.

I have done actual retrieves of fellow glider pilots in this terrain, and know how really bad it is. You may not want to judge these guys, but I am trying to save lives here. As such, I make NO apologies for these criticisms. You can do as YOU wish!


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Dan, 5J